Alcohol restrictions to extend to boaters as well

Monday, June 3, 2013

If a motorist can be cited for drunken driving with a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent or more, why not the operator of a boat, snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle?

As it stands now, boaters and ATV and snowmobile operators can be cited for drunken operation only if their blood-alcohol level is .10 or more. That’s the level applied also to Michigan motorists until a decade ago.

Since the rule changed for motorists, the rate of fatal crashes has dropped by 23 percent.

We recognize that the accident rate for boats and off-road vehicles is small compared to cars.

In 2011, the latest year for which nationwide numbers are available, a total of 758 boating deaths were reported by the U.S. Coast Guard, 26 of them in Michigan.

The annual nationwide number has been remarkably constant since 1999, varying between last year’s number and a low of 672 the previous year.

Michigan was among the safest states, with 3.2 deaths per 100,000 registered boats.

But we can surely prevent a few more.

Across the nation, a large proportion of those 758 deaths in 2011 involved use of alcohol.

On a roadway, we operate in one dimension, often amid congestion and sometimes at high speed. In a boat, we operate in two dimensions. We’re required to be aware of other watercraft in a 360-degree field, in a craft that sometimes becomes a floating living room, a place conducive to kicking back and getting another drink. Boating requires a different kind of attention, and it’s as capable as any other of being dulled by drink.

If the rates of accidents and fatalities are smaller, the accidents can nevertheless be horrific: Operators of ORVs run into trees on trails and sometimes into each other. Boats occasionally run headlong into docks, over swimmers and into each other.

Alcohol makes such events more likely, as the Coast Guard numbers show.

Macomb Sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Brossard heads departmental patrols on Lake St. Clair. “All the arguments that can be made for .08 on the highways can also be made on the waterways.”

Perhaps some inebriate in the Legislature can come up with a reason not to pass such legislation. But we can’t.